What is your favourite scary movie to watch at Halloween?

Halloween used to be about setting off bangers and throwing eggs at people’s windows. But now it’s gone all commercial. Somewhere along the way, the true meaning of Halloween (humiliating someone by covering them in egg yolk) has been lost.

Some of us are too old these days to go running around wreaking havoc on Halloween night. Instead, we will be cosying in with a quiet movie. But what movie should we choose? There are any number of frightening films out there – Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding…. pretty much anything with Julia Roberts apart from Mona Lisa Smile, which is fabulous – but how do you go about picking the right one for Halloween night?

The first scary movie to spring to mind when thinking about what to watch at Halloween is, of course, Halloween. There are those who think John Carpenter’s slasher has lost its ability to scare the bejaysis out of you. Well, you can stop talking to those people right away. Halloween is that rare beast, a brilliant film about babysitting. As if looking after unruly children wasn’t frightening enough, poor Jamie Lee Curtis has to deal with the guy who starred in The Love Guru. What? Oh… MICHAEL Myers…

He doesn’t say much, Michael Myers, but what he lacks in chat he more than makes up for in attitude. He just wants to kill things. He’s a real git. But a scary one. And yet he isn’t even the scariest thing in Halloween. Getting past the opening credits is a challenge in itself.

Another film that scared me then and still scares me now is Something Wicked This Way Comes. It’s a bit of an underrated gem, mainly because it tanked at the box office and Disney disowned it. Like most of the really scary movies, it’s for kids. It has spiders and a spooky funfair. That’s all you need really.

Yes, you can opt for another Carpenter classic, The Thing, as I did myself a few Halloweens ago, or something sinister and gory like Alien or something explosive and gory like Aliens, but sometimes there is nothing scarier than Bette Midler. Or Sarah Jessica Parker. I am talking, of course, about Hocus Pocus.

If that kind of scary fun is your thing, or if you’re a wuss like me, you might want to go with The Nightmare Before Christmas or maybe The Monster Squad or The Lost Boys.

Me? There are a few films I just will not watch alone any more. One of them is Ringu. The other is The Descent. This Halloween, I might just play it safe and go with an old favourite…